Back to Work

This summer, I took a break from writing fiction and poetry and gave myself at least until Labor Day. Last week, I slowly got back to work.

I'm glad I took a break. At the moment, writing feels like less of an all-or-nothing proposition. Recently I realized that while I haven't published a book, I have taken years of classes and workshops. I have published pieces in various periodicals. I know how to write queries and approach agents. Before, I looked at all that information and thought, "And I still haven't managed to publish a book! There must be something wrong with me." Now, though, I can see that all those aspects of my background make it more likely that I will publish a book someday. I hope.

I went back to the novel I was working on and tinkered with the first chapter. I started doing research for a new project. I sent some stories to friends to be critiqued. I have a humor piece revised and ready to send to a parenting magazine. On Saturday, I signed up for a fiction critique group that is being started by the St. Louis Writer's Guild, and I'm registered to share at the open mic reading tonight.

I am trying to act from a calmer place--not out of fear of failure or out of a sense of inadequacy, but from a sense of moving toward something I love to do. I don't think I can stop writing any more than I can stop dreaming. Both writing and dreaming (and I mean dreaming in the literal nighttime way, not the sappy way) are a chance to process life and re-shape it, to make strange and wonderful connections.



P.S. to my readers: If anyone knows exactly what a doctor passing by the scene of an accident would do to check an immobile pedestrian who has been hit by a car, please email me at the above address.